blindboygrunt Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 in lieu of the j200 discussion that has arisen from the agf thread , my thoughts are drawn to this thought .... according to the taylor players , gibsons are 'dud' guitars (i'm paraphrasing here) , there are countless members here who have played lots of duds . anyone actually own a dud ? owned one ? how did you manage to sell it ? everyone on here mentions duds and how they played lots before they got theirs , and everyone here has a 'good one' , 'lucky enough to find a good one ' there have been loads of NGD posts showing the growing online ordering market , and none that say they ended up with a dud . are there countless gibsons lying in cases not being played because they are one of these countless duds and the folk who bought them are just happy to resign themselves to the fact that they didnt listen to the warnings ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duluthdan Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 Apparently some guys on the AGF have a lock on those... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blindboygrunt Posted March 26, 2013 Author Share Posted March 26, 2013 lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MorrisrownSal Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 I think "dud" guitar = hasn't got a proper setup. I have bought my two Gibsons, one new and one used, online. They both sound great to me. I suppose I was lucky to play the numerous j45's in stores that i have, that have also sounded good. And the j35 I played a few weeks ago in a store just happened to sound great. I am so lucky I guess. Gonna go play powerball now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stein Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 Lol..GOOD question. I think it's a lot of different answers regarding different guitars and players. If it's Guitar Center, I think one thing is that there are a LOT of Taylors compared to just a few Gibby's. But comparitively, Taylors are much brighter and thinner sounding guitars. So, if you are looking for that, and you have already played a few Taylors and got that in your ears at that moment, the Gibby's are going to sound a lot duller. So, consider the crowd. The other, is that When GC gets a "new" stock, the better ones tend to sell out pretty quick. The standouts don't last long. I think a lot of really nice ones likely come and go without a lot of poeple realizing they are there. Another factor, is eventually, at SOME point, somebody is going to change the strings. Yet another factor, and I think this is a biggy, is that one man's dud is another man's perfect big warm strummer. We don't all use the same picks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParlourMan Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 Unbeknown to many, guitar shop staff can sniff out a Taylor/Martin snob a mile off, they keep these duds just for such an occasion leaving the decent stock for the likes of you & me. True story I tell ye.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichG Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 There's a guy who comes to our local jam with a custom shop Hbird he bought at GC a couple of years ago. It cannot be heard, even when sitting next to him. I asked him if I could try it and it was dead. Now, God only knows how old the strings are, but I also noticed the action was very low. He said he likes it that way. He thought the action on my new (at the time) AJ was too high, when I think it is perfect. My AJ is at least twice as loud as his bird and my SCSJ is even louder. In fact my low end Voyage Air which I took to the last jam sounded better an louder. I'd love to get my hands on it and put some decent strings on it, but I don't want to insult the guy. He thinks it is great. I've bought two new Gibsons in the last six months. I played a few different models. They all sounded great and I would have been happy with any one. I'm just happier with the ones I bought. I've played a J45, J45TV, J45 Purevoice, and recently the new J35. I would have been proud to own any one. These were all at a Five Stae Dealer. In 1991 I went to Mandolin Bros to buy an HD28. He had six, and they all sounded a little different to me. I bought the one that sounded second best. The one that sounded best was a 1940 that cost $20K at the time. Rich Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blindboygrunt Posted March 26, 2013 Author Share Posted March 26, 2013 [quote name='stein' timestamp='1364297371' post='1351492' Yet another factor, and I think this is a biggy, is that one man's dud is another man's perfect big warm strummer. We don't all use the same picks. that makes the most sense to me , especially anongst the folk who look for 'cannons' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fortyearspickn Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 that makes the most sense to me , especially anongst the folk who look for 'cannons' Yeppers, I've always felt the main reason for this guitar equivalent of "MaryAnn VS Ginger" is because "beauty is in the eye of the beholder.". In this case, In Your Ear! Our hearing apparatus are all different. Some of us hear lows better. So we are attracted to different guitars than those who hear highs better. And, of course, some of us hear better and don't need cannons. And, then "taste" enters in to overlay that second dynamic - some of us prefer louder. So, the people attracted to the Taylor sound want the sound their urban, quiche filled ears appreciate. We here, on the other hand, have the equivalent of EuroAussies 'socks ' in our ears I guess. Or our sound holes or both. This would explain why he only has two Bozeman's: . Two ears. Two socks. Of course, I love Taylor's and Taylor owners. This is only meant to be tongue in cheek. Or, if you prefer, tongue in ear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zombywoof Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 Don't you know the universal law? Your guitar is never a dud, it is a cannon and a tone monster. It is always the next guy's guitar that is a dog. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParlourMan Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 Don't you know the universal law? Your guitar is never a dud, it is a cannon and a tone monster. It is always the next guy's guitar that is a dog. you forgot to add the other chest-beating classics such as "my ears are precious and I'm a benchmark for all that is correct, I also like to use ridiculous adjectives to describe sound and audio properties as well" seen quite a lot of prose wrapped around exactly those sentiments on plenty of 'tone' threads too.... or as someone who once had a sniff of the wisdom bottle may have once said 'that which brought us together is what will tear us apart'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The dman Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 I have a theory of partially why the "warmness" of Gibsons or other brands might be shunned by some I've been a recording engineer for over 30 years and have witnessed the death of high fidelity. Music now is overly bright, compressed to oblivion and some even distorted in the interest of being loud and in your face. Don't get me wrong there's some wonderful sounding new music that is being released but for every one of those cd's there's 100 that sound like nails on a chalkboard. Now we have a whole generation of players who've never really heard quality recordings on a quality system. They listen on mp3players with earbuds or streaming over sites like youtube through small crappy computer speakers. When you listen under these conditions there's frequencies missing and artifacts in the sound but you won't hear them on a inferior speaker but I can hear the results loud and clear through my studio monitors. One day I piped my tv through my studio speakers and couldn't even listen because everything was so over compressed and it sounded awful. Through my little tv speaker or even a sub par stereo you don't notice it but put it through a system that's truthful and Ouch you can hear what's really going on All the above stated is the benchmark that a lot of people use now so it makes sense to me that it's carried over into the selection of instruments and sounds. I've even recorded young vocalists who have incorporated auto tune sound into their vocal technique without even knowing it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryn6490 Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 A guitar might not sound good to one person but the same guitar will be the holly grail to someone else. So the answer is....There are no duds. Also Some players can make any guitar sound good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zombywoof Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 I've been a recording engineer for over 30 years and have witnessed the death of high fidelity. Music now is overly bright, compressed to oblivion and some even distorted in the interest of being loud and in your face. I definitely agree that bright has more and more become what many take as the definition of better sounding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JuanCarlosVejar Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 still in the guitar stores ?????? maybe they are sent back to bozeman at some point ? . I think what people percieve to be a dud is a guitar that doesn't meet their tonal expectations at the moment but since so many people play it when they are A/Bing guitars it could be that by the time someone else comes in and plays it it has opened up + had a string change .... My Sj 200 didn't sound super stunning at first it just sounded good ... but I played it alot and now it sound really nice and it will countinue to get better I hope . So maybe if different people are giving the same dud a strum for 3 or 6 months straight what was initially a not so stellar guitar begins to sound better (if the guitar has no structural problems) JC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParlourMan Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 damned if you do, damned if you don't regardless of individual perception, collective perception and populist opinion, all brands will always have their naysayers for a variety of reasons. Some men just want to watch the world burn.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mountainpicker Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 Up until about two years ago there were no guitar shops with a number of guitars to choose from within a four hours drive of where I live. When I first started looking for a really decent guitar I decided to rely on the reputation of the maker to help insure that I got a good instrument since I was going to get it online and without playing it first. I chose a Santa Cruz D/PW. It's a 2005 model I bought new. I still own it and it is still the finest guitar in my collection and has done nothing but sound better and better with age. But it's not my favorite guitar. Since I consider my SC to be my "Martin" dreadnaught, when I started looking around for other instruments I thought I'd look at smaller bodied ones to compliment what I already had. A couple passed through my hands and they weren't really duds, they just didn't make the fun meter jump in any meaningful way, so they came and went. Since I ain't no spring chicken I got into considering what might make playing a little easier on my body and found out about short scale guitars. Turning down that road is when I started looking harder at Gibsons. I did a lot of reading but mostly, I came to realize, that a lot of the music that I've loved over the years is/was played on a Gibson...acoustic and electric. There is a certain sound that comes out of a Gibson and I like that sound, regardless of who the artist is that is playing that Gibson. It's not that I don't like music played on other guitars but that a lot of things I like end up being played on Gibsons. Having owned a Santa Cruz VJ I had experienced a Gibson clone, and it is a great guitar (now owned by a playing partner) but it is NOT a Gibson. So I decided to get a slope dread. I found a 2006 J-50 on ebay and got it for $1600 delivered. I suspect it was some shop's "dud", one no one wanted to buy. I put a Colosi saddle and pins on it and had it set up professionally by the Woodsongs people in Boulder. It's been on a ToneRite for God knows how many hours and played almost every day for three years or so. I absolutely love this guitar. It is beginning to be something completely different than what it was at first, it is becoming the Gibson I was looking for at the beginning. I have come to believe, but only from my limited experience, that Gibsons were designed to be mass produced and the mass production of their designs is a lot of what makes them what they are. They have flaws, and inconsistencies but that is accounted for in the design and manufacture and what was also taken into account in their manufacture was how the guitar was going to age. If a small shop luthier copies a Gibson they can literally pay too much attention to detail and go beyond what an assembly line Gibson is, and in so doing something else gets created. That something else is not a bad thing necessarily, but it is no longer a Gibson, and therfore no longer can sound like a Gibson (and we know what going too far in the other direction, a la Norlin does too!). Maybe this is just romantic BS on my part but it is what I've come to believe about Gibsons and why I now own two and will probably own more down the road. So to all you Taylor guys out there, excuse me while I go listen to some Lightnin' Hopkins and try and imagine him gettin THAT sound out of a Taylor! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fortyearspickn Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 you forgot to add the other chest-beating classics such as "my ears are precious and I'm a benchmark for all that is correct, I also like to use ridiculous adjectives to describe sound and audio properties as well" seen quite a lot of prose wrapped around exactly those sentiments on plenty of 'tone' threads too.... or as someone who once had a sniff of the wisdom bottle may have once said 'that which brought us together is what will tear us apart'. Yes. Good one PM! ! I'll have to get me one of those "wisdom bottles". Do you just sniff? I have to make up for lost time.... Drink deeply or taste not the Pieriian Spring? I've never been good at coming up with ten adjectives to describe a guitars sound. Maybe I should just buy a Thesaurus? Chevys are warmer and project more sincerity and macho-ism than Fords? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BluesKing777 Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 Where do the Duds end up? Australia probably! 1 year warranty only and too hard to send back.... Then Europe? BluesKing777. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
onewilyfool Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 In 1991 I went to Mandolin Bros to buy an HD28. He had six, and they all sounded a little different to me. I bought the one that sounded second best. The one that sounded best was a 1940 that cost $20K at the time. Rich Good thing your name is RICH!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParlourMan Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 Yes. Good one PM! ! I'll have to get me one of those "wisdom bottles". Do you just sniff? I have to make up for lost time.... Drink deeply or taste not the Pieriian Spring? I've never been good at coming up with ten adjectives to describe a guitars sound. Maybe I should just buy a Thesaurus? Chevys are warmer and project more sincerity and macho-ism than Fords? Personally I've never been able to hear the sound of 'full bodied like a deep red wine" or "chocolatey" what does chocolate sound like? What does throaty sound like, is the guitar suffering from coughing bouts, is it a tickley cough, a chesty bark? is its sound as irritating as a colleague coughing all day in the office? Probably not a selling feature there... These things make no sense... resonates for days... must be a nightmare to record then, that last ringing and never-ending chord must really add to the recording costs.... It's marketing speak, nothing more... Chocolate sounds of nothing neither does red wine and throaty suggests your guitar needs a doctor or some vicks slapped on its chest. Velvet, there's another one, velvet is a material and has no audio signature, if you're comparing the smooth feel of velvet to a smooth audio performance of a guitar, what are the comparison parameters, velvet is also a variant, it's not a single recipe material. I suppose these words sound a bit more fruity than sticking to describing the presence levels for lows, mids and highs or simply sticking to comments on an aggressive response or a smoother output which might indicate decay levels also. To be honest I think it's loads of madness some bugger made up to make it sound like he knew what he was talking about. It's the kind of banter you'd have expected in some wind-up from Beadles about and it's caught on by people who want to compare guitars to a bottle of Buckfast or a Cadbury's Wispa. Boggles my mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blindboygrunt Posted March 26, 2013 Author Share Posted March 26, 2013 do taylor players talk about playing as many as you can ? or martin fans ? or any other name of guitar ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guth Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 Lets hear them. When I stop by my local 5-star dealer, I'll check out just about every single Gibson on display. Lots of them aren't even worth taking down off of the wall — I'll strum my thumb across each open string and the strings sound like rubber bands instead of steel strings, especially the low-E string. Total crap, just a muted thud of mud, no edge to the note, no ring to it at all. I might spend more time with the examples that don't exhibit this trait and still most of them sound fairly lifeless and muted ("stuffed with socks like"). Most every other guitar on display that I check out doesn't do these things so I don't buy into excuses like the strings are too old or it needs a setup or the room humidity wasn't right. I notice that most people are quick to post picures of their guitars but very few post sound clips. Digital recorders can be had now for prices in line with cameras, phones, etc. so that shouldn't be an issue for anyone who can afford the kind of guitars we're talking about here. Even videos would work. Wouldn't have to be anything fancy, but should be something other than strumming a few cowboy chords so that we can hear each string separately be it single note runs, some fingerpicking or simply picking across each string individually through a chord progression. Some chords/notes played higher up the neck in any fashion would be good too. Nothing fancy at all, but something that gives a good sonic representation of the guitars overall sonic traits. So, lets here them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blindboygrunt Posted March 26, 2013 Author Share Posted March 26, 2013 yeah , get yer ya-ya's out ... how do you explain what youre saying about the dead gibsons hangung on the wall Guth ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stein Posted March 26, 2013 Share Posted March 26, 2013 I have a theory of partially why the "warmness" of Gibsons or other brands might be shunned by some I've been a recording engineer for over 30 years and have witnessed the death of high fidelity. Music now is overly bright, compressed to oblivion and some even distorted in the interest of being loud and in your face. Don't get me wrong there's some wonderful sounding new music that is being released but for every one of those cd's there's 100 that sound like nails on a chalkboard. Now we have a whole generation of players who've never really heard quality recordings on a quality system. They listen on mp3players with earbuds or streaming over sites like youtube through small crappy computer speakers. When you listen under these conditions there's frequencies missing and artifacts in the sound but you won't hear them on a inferior speaker but I can hear the results loud and clear through my studio monitors. One day I piped my tv through my studio speakers and couldn't even listen because everything was so over compressed and it sounded awful. Through my little tv speaker or even a sub par stereo you don't notice it but put it through a system that's truthful and Ouch you can hear what's really going on All the above stated is the benchmark that a lot of people use now so it makes sense to me that it's carried over into the selection of instruments and sounds. I've even recorded young vocalists who have incorporated auto tune sound into their vocal technique without even knowing it Totally agree here. Quality wise, we are literally using stuff that is on the level of mono transister radio type stuff from the 70's. A stereo boombox playing a cassette has more fidelity and information than the majority of what we listen with these days. The difference is, with computers and digital recording, where we lack "fidelity" and clarity, we can add treble and compression, which makes us THINK we are hearing it better, but really loosing more "info" in the process. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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